Ashland, Ore.— Charges against a 12-year-old boy accused of fatally stabbing his mother and injuring his sister have been filed. The charges are murder, attempted murder and assault.
At this point the boy is being charged as a juvenile.
District Attorney Beth Heckert said the investigation is ongoing and the D.A.’s office the ability to remand the boy into adult court to face murder charges.
Police say the 12-year-old stabbed his mother and sister Tuesday morning, inside their home on Morton Street. The boy is in custody, but police say the investigation is far from over.
“This is a real tragedy,” Chief Tighe O’Meara of the Ashland Police Department says, “and it’s going to affect a lot of people in a really profoundly negative way.”
What is usually a quiet neighborhood nestled in the Ashland hills, became a gruesome crime scene Tuesday morning when police received two 911 calls from inside the home. When police arrived they found 52-year-old Pamela Wolosz dead, and her 16 year-old daughter alive, but seriously hurt.
Police say the 12-year-old son and brother of the victims stabbed them multiple times with a chef’s knife.
“To watch this unfold and see a 12-year-old taken into custody for murdering his mother,” Chief O’Meara says, “it’s been a rough day and it’s gonna be a rough patch for the community to work through.”
“This is especially tragic,” O’Meara adds.
Right now police don’t have a motive for the crimes, and they say the full investigation could take days or even weeks, but they say at this point in their investigation no one could have seen this coming.
“This is completely out of the blue,” O’Meara says.
The 12-year-old made his first court appearance Wednesday morning, sitting quiet and emotionless. He has denied all three charges brought against him.
He will be back in court January 25th.
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